half days are teh rule!

Our first week of school has been all half days due to air conditioner issues in the building. How brilliant life would be if there were more half days in the world. I get so much work done in the afternoons when the children are gone. More collaborating, more copies, more papers graded. And then I go home and there is less pressure to keep working so much and less pressure in the morning to be in to work extra early.

Feeling incredibly organized, too, so far. I have my binder with all my students' math & science pretests. Most of them are even already graded. I've got a file folder for each student at my desk, each with a behavior log stapled to the front. I've got files going for each new handout and test and reading and whatever that I give out. Having the lectern for my Promethean board up front where I actually teach makes keeping up with my papers easier. And I'm getting the kids to do most of my legwork for me.

Have a few rowdy boys in my second class that I am monitoring. So far nothing like what I had to deal with last year as far as behavior disorders, etc. But the ringleader is obviously a smart kid so I have to jump on him to use those brains constructively. The chatty girls are the issue in my first class. They will not be sitting with each other. My seating is mostly randomized right now which has worked out okay. I'm going to mix them up again next week ostensibly to help me learn their names faster. Really, though, I don't want them thinking that they are going to sit wherever the hell they want.

Much effective use of the authoritative, take-no-shit teacher voice today. No really yelling, just a good fear-inspiring boom. It's getting the right reaction. Because I'm the boss, dammit.

My job kicks ass.

cleaning up, clearing out

This paperwork disaster is my classroom. No more bulletin boards, no more posters, no more students in desks. Just lots and lots of paper. This is me trying to get organized on multiple levels. The first is making sure I have enough evidence to back up the 20 F's I gave out (that is, for a little more perspective on the numbers, equivalent to the entirety of my homeroom class this year). Two kids to a desk--that's eight per group of four desks--with their tests and quizzes and class assignments stacking up as I clean out what's in my desk and my file cabinet. There is more paper at home.

The rest of the papers piled up in my room are worksheets and assignments that will be reused in the future, organized mostly by subject (fractions, decimals, place value, geometry, multiplication practice, integers, etc) so that I can put together the beginnings of a filing system which will hopefully make planning that much easier for next year.

And yes, there will be a next year. I just signed my new contract today. I've been told I'll be teaching science in addition to math. I sincerely hope this is not true, but at least this time I have two-and-a-half months warning to try and become a physical science expert before the kids find me out for the fraud I am.

a nearly stress free week!

This week has been alright. I think I'm getting into a good pace. Still a little too brisk, but more manageable. The most helpful part has been the face that D got himself suspended for 6 days and that makes my second period classroom about a hundred times more manageable. It's amazing what havoc one child can cause. I found out some other disturbing things about him that make me wonder how this kid can ever avoid the fate of so many New Orleans children: in and out of jail, dead on the street. All I can think of right now is the good of my other 49 kids and that good means that this one kid has to go. He's a terrible influence and I don't have the tools to help him straighten out (if in fact he ever gets the notion to make something better of himself).

I also had four other boys on in school suspension for Thursday and that made my Thursday go by like butter. The absence of them made my other trouble case, SR, look like a completely different kid. He did all his classwork and then some and he never once talked back to me, mocked me, or argued about it. I hardly recognized him.

Started making my kids serve detentions with me this week during their P.E. I am trying to cut down on the exorbitant gum chewing and eating in my class. I tell them to spit it out and I end up catching them another half dozen times in class. So I am back to my three strikes. I tell them once to spit gum out as they walk into class. Any breaking of the rules once they are inside goes against their three strikes. They get three chances and on the fourth anything they get to spend P.E. with me in my freezer of a classroom. Too early to tell whether it is working (a lot of my kids seem indignant but that's middle school for you), but one of my worst gum offenders had detention yesterday and I didn't catch him today. I made the gum chewers fill in every single square on a sheet of graph paper with GUM, one letter per box, until the paper was full. I hate having to give up my free planning periods to do the detention but hopefully it will make my life easier for the rest of the day.

On the subject of getting my teaching butt organized, I set up a bulletin board system so that my kids have to be responsible for their own missing homework. No more putting together homework packets for three weeks. They have a week to turn in a missing assignment and then they are out of luck. I've got folders for each day and little cards with missing assignments marked off for each kid. I'm rather proud of it.

I also got to hand my kids over for a chunk of today to work on the budget finally. It was fantastic. Get to do it again on Monday for part of the day. Got the principal all set up with a much more manageable spreadsheet for the school's petty cash account and started setting up the larger budget into something that will be easier to track. Also gave him a couple of derby tickets.

Marigny Antoinettes vs. Crescent Wenches is coming up next weekend. I'm stoked and terrified. I've never had to jam in a bout before and I think I'm going to have to do it this time. Possibly going to sub for another team too (it's a doubleheader), but no decision has been made. If you haven't got tickets yet get them now!

multitasking and organization

There is a crazy amount of paperwork to keep up with and my meager filing system is not yet up to the task. I need a file for each student, files for lesson plans, files for activities, files for school handouts, files for discipline documentation, files for nurse notes, files for tests, files for assignments to grade and assignments that have been graded. And there is just not time to do all of this. Or maybe I'm just to exhausted to think about it but I know that I have to get organized and that will make my life easier. Before you start teaching everybody says, "Be organized," but no one really tells you where to start. It's all on-the-job training. I am forced to wing it constantly, which I knew would happen but I can't help but wonder whether I'm really making the best decisions that way. I miss lots of things. I can only multitask up to a certain point and then my brain just falls apart. It's like an endurance sport trying to keep up with it all.

Oh, let's not forget all the IEPs I have yet to read and cumilative files for all my students in the office that I keep meaning to go look at. And all the phone calls I keep meaning to make.

I just need one more day in my weekend to keep my thoughts together. The good news is that Tuesday is an in-service day so I only have to plan four lessons for this week. Speaking of which, I must get to it.

have macbook, will travel

i'm blogging at the r-bar!

due to the purchase of my shiny, sexy new macbook i am now a citywide blogger! seeing as it is a holiday weekend and i have been doing nothing but going to work and working on derby i opted to have a lounging/drinking day. somewhere between the WFTDA conference and derby practice and the end-of-season awards shenanigans i've ceased to have a life so today my life is measured in rum and cokes. tomorrow i will get back to the odious task of Getting Organized and will perhaps find new and fabulous things to post. i already have quite a collection of memorabilia that i need to scan but as i said, derby is life. my goal, should i choose to accept it, is to have a house that is somewhat functional by the time i start school on june 15th. so, after i quit my job on thursday and then go to 80s night and then go to destin for the weekend and interview with the Recovery School Disctrict, i have quite the to-do list to get through. hopefully, i will have further progress to report then.

tomorrow (memorial day) i am going to try and get a head start before further madness ensues. more to come. but for now there is only more rum!